Creative team authorship: Sequential and cascading mutual catalysis

Abstract

The capacity to successfully conduct independent research is a keystone of PhD candidature. While candidates must demonstrate this capacity to examiners, they must also learn to engage in creative and ethical teamwork, if they are to graduate as successful research professionals. Joint publication of academic work provides an opportunity to address these conflicting goals of independence and teamwork. This chapter shows how joint authorship between candidates and supervisors, when undertaken in interactive and constructive ways, can both enhance the writing process and build ethical ways of creating new knowledge collaboratively. The importance of acknowledging the contribution of others, the role of writing in knowledge creation and the nature of the interactive processes involved in writing with others are explored in detail. Three research case studies illustrate the processes and relationships involved in knowledge creation through joint, interactive writing. Two theoretical constructs, sequential mutual catalysis and cascading mutual catalysis, are presented as a model for PhD candidates, indeed for all researchers. The model assumes that the primary purpose of interactive writing is to produce an outcome that is more substantial, more creative and more significant than any one author could produce alone. Making a contribution to society and engaging in satisfying work are also important goals. The implications for PhD candidates are the development of a range of attributes, including new ways of furthering knowledge through joint authorship, while working within codes of integrity, and a heightened appreciation of the role of writing within such knowledge creation.